Extreme Denial Part 21

Esperanza raised his shoulders. "Maybe Mr. Decker will share what he knows with us if we share with him. What have you got?"

"Something weird. You told me to a.s.sign officers to question people in the area-neighbors who might have been outside, someone who might have been walking by, busybodies who've been hanging around, curious about what happened last night, anybody who might have seen the explosions." Esperanza antic.i.p.ated. "And our men found someone who can help us?"

"Well, I think it's a complication more than a help," Sanchez said.

"d.a.m.n it, what did you learn?" Decker stepped closer. "What are you trying to hide from me?"

"Down on Fort Connor Lane, the street below and behind these houses, a woman was looking for a lost dog. Just before the explosions, she was startled by someone hurrying down through the trees and bushes on the slope."

"Whoever set off the bombs," Decker said. "Does the woman remember well enough to provide a description?"

"Yes. The person she saw was another woman."

Decker felt as if he'd been jabbed.

"Carrying a suitcase," the policeman said.

"What?"

"Attractive, in her early thirties, with long auburn hair, wearing jeans and a pullover. Her right arm was under the pullover, as if the arm had been injured."

Decker put a hand against the paramedic truck. The ground seemed to s.h.i.+ft. He felt dizzy, his legs unsteady, his sanity tilting. "But you just described ..."

"Beth Dwyer. That's right," Sanchez said. "The woman looking for her dog says there was a car parked on Fort Connor Lane. A man was inside. When he saw the woman with the suitcase, he hurried out, put her suitcase in the trunk, and helped her into the car. That's when the bombs went off, when they were driving away."

"I don't understand," Decker said. "This doesn't make sense. How could ...?"

A fireman came over, taking his wide-brimmed metal hat off, dripping sweat from his soot-smeared face, reaching for a bottle of water a paramedic offered him. "There's still no sign of a victim," he told Esperanza.

Decker's heartbeat became sickeningly fast. His mind swirled. "But why would ...? Beth's alive? What was she doing on the slope? Who the h.e.l.l was in the car?"

2.

It seemed impossible. Beth hadn't been killed! A welter of relief and hope coursed through him. But so did confusion and dismay about her mystifying behavior.

"How did you meet Beth Dwyer?" Esperanza asked. They faced each other in Decker's living room.

"She came to my office. She wanted to buy a house." This can't be happening, Decker thought, slumping on his sofa. "When was this?"

"Two months ago. In July." I'm losing my mind, Decker thought.

"Was she local?"

"No."

"Where did she come from?"

"Back east." Decker's headache was excruciating. "Which city?"

"Some place outside New York."

"Why did she move to Santa Fe?"

"Her husband died in January. Cancer. She wanted to get away from bad memories, to start a new life." Just as I wanted to start a new life, Decker thought.

"This is an expensive district," Esperanza said. "How could she afford to buy her house?"

"Her husband had a sizable life-insurance policy."

"Must have been hefty. What was his occupation?"

"I don't know."

Esperanza looked confused. "I a.s.sumed you were intimate."

"Yes."

"And yet there are several basic things about her past that you don't know."

"I didn't want to ask too many questions," Decker said. "With her husband dead less than a year, I didn't want to raise disturbing memories."

"Such as where she used to live? How disturbing would that have been for her to tell you?"

"I just didn't think to ask." It was another lie. Decker knew exactly why he hadn't asked. In his former life, he had made it his business to elicit every possible sc.r.a.p of personal information from people he had just met, never knowing when that information might prove useful. But from the moment he had arrived in Santa Fe, beginning his new life, reinventing himself, he had been determined to shut out his former calculating ways.

"Was the husband's insurance policy large enough to support her after she bought the house next door to you?"

"She earned a living as an artist," Decker said.

"Oh? What gallery?"

"In New York."

"But what name?"

"I don't know," Decker repeated.

"Imagine that."

"I met the man who runs the gallery. He came to visit. His name is Dale Hawkins."

"When was this?"

"Thursday. The first of September."

"How can you be so specific?"

"It was only nine days ago. I remember because that was the day Beth closed the deal on her house." But Decker had another reason for remembering so quickly-that night, he and Beth had first made love. Beth! he mentally screamed. What in G.o.d's name is going on? Why were you running down the slope in back of your house? Who was the man waiting for you in the car?

"Mr. Decker."

"I'm sorry. I..." Decker blinked, realizing that his attention had drifted, that Esperanza had continued speaking to him.

"You said someone with a remote-control detonator must have been watching the house."

"That's right."

"Why didn't that person set off the bombs when you were with Ms. Dwyer outside her house?"

"Unless I went inside, it wouldn't have been one hundred percent certain that the bombs would have done the job."

"So the spotter decided to wait until you left before setting off the bombs?" Esperanza asked. "Does that tactic make sense?"

Decker felt a chill.

"If you were the target," Esperanza added.

"Beth was the target?" Decker's chill became so intense that it made him s.h.i.+ver. "You're saying that this afternoon and last night, they weren't after me?"

"She was obviously afraid of something. Otherwise, she wouldn't have been running down the back slope of her house."

Decker's face tingled. "They were after Beth? Jesus." Nothing in his experience-not in military special operations, not in ant.i.terrorist intelligence work-could compare with what he was going through. He had never felt so emotionally threatened. But then, until he came to Santa Fe, he had never put down his defensive mechanisms and allowed himself to be emotionally vulnerable.

"A while ago, you spoke about the radio frequencies used to set off bombs by remote control," Esperanza said. "Where did you learn so much about how to blow up a building?" Decker wasn't paying attention. He was too busy a.n.a.lyzing implications. For over a year, he had been in a state of denial, convinced that all he needed to be content were a total unsuspicious openness to the present and an equally total rejection of the calculating habits of his former life. But now he embraced those habits with a resolution that startled him. He picked up the telephone book, found the listing he wanted, and urgently pressed numbers.

"Mr. Decker, what are you doing?"

"Phoning St. Vincent's Hospital."

Esperanza looked baffled.

When a receptionist answered, Decker said, "Please put me through to whatever nurses' station is responsible for room three one one six."

When someone else answered, Decker said, "You had a gunshot victim, Beth Dwyer, who was just released. I'd like to speak to any of the nurses who took care of her."

"One moment."

Someone else picked up the phone. "Yes, I helped take care of Beth Dwyer," a pleasant-voiced woman said. "Of course, I didn't come on duty until seven. Other nurses would have taken care of her before that."

"This is one of the police officers investigating her shooting."

"Hey," Esperanza demanded, "what do you think you're doing?"

Decker held up a hand, gesturing for Esperanza to give him a chance. "Did she have any visitors?"

"Only a male friend of hers."

That was probably me, Decker thought. But he was finished taking things for granted. "What did the man look like?"

"Tall, well-built, around forty."

"Sandy hair?"

"As I remember. He was good looking in a rugged sort of way. I didn't see anybody else."

"What about phone calls?"

"Oh, she made plenty of those."

"What?"

"She received several, too. The phone was ringing constantly for a while. If I was in her room, she wouldn't speak to whoever was calling until I left."

Decker's chest felt heavy. "Thank you," he managed to tell the nurse. "You've been very helpful." Pensive, he set down the phone.

"What was that about?" Esperanza asked. "Do you know the penalty for impersonating a police officer?"

"Beth made and received several calls. But to my knowledge, I'm the only close friend she has in town. So who was she calling, and who was calling her?"

"If her calls were long distance and she didn't reverse the charges, there'll be a record of the numbers she called," Esperanza said.

"Get it. But I have a suspicion the calls were local-that she was talking to the man who was waiting on Fort Connor Lane to pick her up. When I brought her some clothes so she'd have something to wear when she left the hospital, she told me she felt so grungy that she was embarra.s.sed to get dressed in front of me. She asked me to wait outside in the corridor. Given her injury and the fact that she might have needed help, I thought it was an impractical time to be modest, but I let it go. Now it's my guess she took the opportunity to make a final call to the man and tell him she was being released-to confirm what time he'd be waiting for her. But who the h.e.l.l was he?"

In addition to Decker's other confusing, overwhelming emotions-relief that Beth was alive, bewilderment about her behavior-a new one suddenly intruded: jealousy. Dear G.o.d, is it possible? he thought. Could Beth have had a secret lover? Could she have been seeing someone else all the time I knew her? Questions tumbled frantically through his mind. How would she have met him? Is he someone who followed her from back east? Someone from her past?

"The man who was waiting in the car-did the woman who saw him get a good-enough look to provide a description?" Decker asked.

"Sanchez would know."

As Decker started toward the front door, in a rush to get outside to where Sanchez was guarding the house, the front door opened abruptly.

Sanchez appeared, startling Decker. "Two men who claim to be friends of yours want to see you."

"Probably neighbors or people I work with. Tell them I'll talk to them later. Listen, there's something I need to ask you."

"These men are very insistent," Sanchez said. "They emphasized that they're old friends of yours, very old friends. They say their names are Hal and Ben."

3.